Friday, January 23, 2015

✦ It seems there is always room for another art-related site on the Web. One of the more recent is The Artist Next Level (TANL), which describes its objectives as "inspire[ing] you to thrive and succeed in your art career through our free podcasts, webinars, seminars, social groups, [and] personal/virtual coaching and offer technology to create a scalable business. . . ." Take a look for yourself. The platform was created by Chicago visual artist and entrepreneur Sergio Gomez, psychologist Yanina Gomez, Ph.D., and 33 Contemporary Gallery. Easily navigated, the site also contains a Resources page and a link to Sergio Gomez Art Blog. Interviews and other features are planned.

✦ In late December 2014, George Eastman House officially launched its completed Photographic Process Videos project, which can be viewed in entirety on YouTube. The project comprises 12 videos: Before Photography, The Daguerreotype, Talbot's Processes, The Cyanotype, The Collodion, The Albumen Print, The Platinum Print, The Pigment Processes, The Woodburytype, The Gelatin Silver Process, Color Photography, and Digital Photography. The series is a terrific resource. Here's the program on the gelatin silver process:

✦ Contemporary London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor will be showing work at Versailles this year, from June through October. Kapoor's will be a solo exhibition at the 17th Century palace outside Paris.

✦ Here's a stellar contemporary textile/mixed-media artist I recently found online: Gizella K Warburton. Visit her gallery to view examples of her work, which are composed of cloth, papers, yarns, strings, paint, charcoal, or weathered wood, among other materials. Warburton, who lives and works in Leicestershire, East Midlands, United Kingdom, takes commissions and conducts workshops. Warburton last showed her work at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea. Read an interview with Warburton at TextileArtist.

✭ Paintings by Argentinian Raul Diaz remain on view through February 28 in the exhibition "Journey" at Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina. Diaz's art comprises works on paper (watercolor and pencil, oil crayon and graphite), sculptures, and paintings or carvings on wood or wood panels, as well as mixed media on wood panels. His use of color gives his work an appearance of delicacy or dreaminess, imbuing the paintings with atmosphere, and the expressive figures or objects he includes lend them mystery. He calls painting, which he says he's "connected to all day" while secluded in his studio overlooking the mountains, a form of autobiography.

In the video below, filmed in Argentina, the self-taught Diaz demonstrates and talks about his work and artistic process:

A 2002 monograph, Raul Diaz, including 100 color plates, is available from Jerald Melberg.

✭ A solo show of seven new narrative-style works by ceramic sculptor Jason Walker, a Northwest artist represented by Ferrin Contemporary, continues through March 1 at Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington. Titled "Jason Walker: On the River, Down the Road", the exhibition is site-specific, comprising an installation of painted porcelains, primarily in the form of animals in surrealistic settings, that "offers an incisive comment on the indelible impact of humanity upon the natural landscape." View a selection of exhibition images. A color catalogue, including an interview with the artist, is available through Ferrin Contemporary.

✭ Celebrating its 90th anniversary, Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, is showing selections from its permanent collection of more than 3,000 works. On view through March 14 in "Masters of the Mulvane" are artworks by Rembrandt, Goya, Whistler, Tiffany, Picasso, Dali, Rauschenberg, and Max Beckman, Gordon Parks, Miriam Shapiro, and Juane Quick-to-See Smith.

✭ Opened January 5, "Whistler and the British Etching Revival" at Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, runs through April 5. Drawn from the museum's permanent collection, the exhibition presents prints by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Francis Seymour Haden (1818-1910), Whistler's brother-in-law, who was both an artist and print collector, and several artists of the next generation. The show also demonstrates the medium of etching (an etching needle is on display) and examines practices that have ensured the etching's continuing appeal.